2012年6月16日星期六

I don’t agree with David Buss about his theory of evolutionary psychology.

David Buss’s theory can be summarized as sexual selection is only for reproduction, and also operates in human beings as well. He found that men and women seek out the mates, who best suit their reproductive needs. Women look for men who can give them resources and protection, and men look for women who appear best able to conceive and give birth to healthy and strong offspring. Through surveys, he found that women were more jealous of emotional infidelity while men were more jealous of sexual infidelity, so Buss hypothesized that women find emotional infidelity more threatening because it could lead to the loss of resources she have gained in that mate and would have to raise children on her own, if the mate really leaves her and has real relationships with another woman. He then hypothesized that men found sexual infidelity threatening because they could risk spending resources on a child that may not be their own.

I don’t deny the results of his survey, but I have to say that Buss is really misled by the results of the survey. Frankly speaking, Buss’s theory is only looking for an excuse for men’s sex instinct in male-dominated society where women can only be dependent on men to get her resources for survival. The biggest limitation of his theory is it is only applicable to human in the past time, but not in future. In other words, Buss’s theory is only applicable to some kinds of societies like China, Japan and Korea, where men hold the dominant position, and women suffer the low status. In China, because of the lack of law, people always have the preference for sons especially in rural. Why does it happen? We have to admit that when food was scarce and violence raged, male physical advantage indeed is much larger than females, but the society like this has nothing difference from animal world. This model in these countries is definitely not the future of human beings. I think a good theory not only can explain what we know, but also can point the direction to what we don’t know it yet, and we should look at Western and Northern Europe. When women can rely on their own labor and mind instead of men to get the resources to survive, when with the development of social civilization, woman can rely on social laws instead of men to protect themselves, when women realize that so-called female multiple orgasms is as shit as Communism, when women identify that they only can get real orgasm by their selves, not by men, even they don’t have to take the pant off, what are women going to choose? What about men? Are they willing to take the yoke of reproduction, while they have sex every time? Is the only purpose men have sex is to reproduce? Is a man who is reluctant to reproduce any more not going to look for young and beautiful women? Absolutely not.

Here are some questions proposed by the students in intimate relationships class from UCLA. I try to give my explanation to these good questions which Buss’ theory can’t explain well.

1 First of all, Buss’s theory can not be applied to same sex relationships. Professor Benjamin Karney gives a far-fetched explanation that same sex relationships between men should be much more open, or accepting of extra relational sexual activity that same sex relationships between women. I don’t think so. The central idea of Buss’s theory is sexual selection is only for reproduction, as women, they want to get good resources from men to raise the babies, as men, they want to get youth and fertility to make their genes pass down. Benjamin’s explanation is fact, but putting the cart before the horse. Buss’s theory claims that the reason of men much more interested in having sex with multiple partners than women is men want to seek someone who can give healthy and strong offspring, but in same sex relationships between men, the only reason is not exist, we have to notice here: men are always looking for more partners than women, regardless same sex relationships or heterosexual relationships. I think looking for better mates to produce is not central reason, because the facts tell us men having more interested in have sex with multiple partners have nothing to do with reproduction.

2 What about people who wear condoms? In current society, during many sex, the purpose of men having sex is not reproduction, but only for the last sudden of few seconds pleasure, so they wear condoms in order to not make women pregnant. How do you explain that? You can’t say that men don’t like young and beautiful women who wear condoms every time.

3 In class, Britney asked what’s going on now with attraction to really skinny women. That is very good question, Buss’s theory also can’t give a rational explanation. I can give you another example for this item, almost in the eyes of people around the world, Diana is much more beautiful and young than Camilla, she gave two handsome and healthy princes to Charles, but everyone knows the result Charles chose Camilla who is one year older than him. God, I hope you are not going to tell me that Charles wants to have a baby with Camilla. I firmly believe that Camilla must have some extraordinary personal charm we don’t know and appreciate, but Charles does. Apparently, he chose Camilla not for reproduction.

4 If everything is only for the reproduction, I want to ask you why men also want to make love with partners in the period of no ovulation. Obviously, animals have sex only during female estrus period, but why men want to have sex in any time. Buss’s theory also can’t explain this difference well between human beings and animals.

In summary, I don’t want to deny the contributions of Buss’s theory, but I think his theory just can be applied to the animal’s world where the purpose of having sex is only for reproduction, but his theory is not applied to human world. Maybe that is why human with much smaller and less strong, can rule the earth, but other big and strong animals can not. Maybe the self-awareness in human being is the biggest difference from other animals during the history of human evolution. I think after I unlock the mystery of female orgasm, Buss would like to change his theory for a little bit. I my opinion, the reason why men like to have multiple sex partners is as same as food is human basic physiological needs, some people like rice very much, but if they eat rice every day, they would like to eat noodle for some fresh, but the result is always getting full. The reason why women don’t have strong sex drive is women never get full, so they don’t care eat this or that. What men do is human biological instincts, but women just get deceived by something. Maybe it is cruel reproduction for human beings.